--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Berzovan Alexandru
> Dan Dana says that the only source for Zalmoxis is the text of
> Herodotus and all the others are copied from him,
I don't know who Dan Dana is (sorry for my ignorance :))
but I don't think that Platon's information below came from Herodotus
<Such, Charmides, I said, is the nature of the charm, which I learned when serving with the army from one of the physicians of the Thracian king Zamolxis, who are to be so skilful that they can even give immortality. This Thracian told me that in these notions of theirs, which I was just now mentioning, the Greek physicians are quite right as far as they go; but Zamolxis, he added, our king, who is also a god, says further, "that as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul; and this," he said, "is the reason why the cure of many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas, because they are ignorant of the whole, which ought to be studied also; for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.
>
Even the above story is invented by Platon, for the sake of the argumentation, the reference to Zamolxis' doctrine is for sure the real one...for the veridicity of argumentation.
So Platon seems to be well aware of Zamolxis' doctrine, even in much more detail and independently of Herodotus' text (at least of that one that arrived to us))
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/plato_charmides01.htm
Marius